Is gender a social construction, caused when parents dress infant daughters in pink and paint sons’ walls blue? Or when they encourage sons to try out for sports and their daughters to try ballet? I always thought that there are minimal biological differences between men and women—until I heard Louann Brizendine’s presentation today, “The Gendered Brain.” Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist who wrote the pathbreaking books The Female Brain and The Male Brain, took us on a tour of the male and female brains during each life stage, and pointed out the differences and similarities.

“The brains are more alike than different,” she said, “After all, we are the same species!” But from her extensive studies, it seems there are differences in the brains that really do make a difference. Some of it does have to do with society and culture, but some of it is biologically based.